Characteristics of Poetry
Poetry – explores the poet’s feelings and stories they want to share.
Speaker – the imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem, the one describing the events in a poem.
Stanza – a group of lines in a poem.
Subject - what the story or poem is about (the topic)
Theme – a central message, idea, or concern that expressed in a literary work.
Figurative Language (Writer’s Craft)
Metaphors:Describe one thing as if it were something else – comparing two unlike things
Ex.The House was a Zoo this morning!
Personification:Gives human qualities to something that is not human
Ex.The car growled in traffic
Similes:Comparing two unlike things using “like” or “as” or “than”
Ex.He stormed into the meeting like a tornado
Symbols:anything that represents something else.
Ex.Dove = peace; heart = love
Hyperbole: Over exaggeration
Ex.The books weigh a ton.
Sensory Language:words that appeal to the five senses to create strong images in the reader’s minds = Imagery
Mood :The atmosphere or feeling an author creates within the piece of writing.
Tone: The attitude of an author toward the subject that he/she is writing about.
Sound Devices:Enhance a poem’s mood and meaning
- Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning of words. Ex. It is a slippery slope.
- Repetition: is the use of any element of language -sound, word, phrase, clause or sentence – more than once.
- Onomatopoeia: Use of words that imitate sounds. Ex. Crash, boom, hiss, bang…
- Rhyme: repetition of sounds at the end of words. Ex. Speech, teach, reach, screech
- Rhythm: is the beat created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Ex. The cat sat on the mat
- Meter: is the rhythmical pattern in a poem.
- Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences
- Consonance: the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy"
Graphic Elements: Visual features that influence a poem’s meaning.
Capital letters, line length, word position
Forms of Poetry:
- Narrative – tells a story in verse. Form is similar to short stories in that they contain a plot and characters
- Haiku – three-line Japanese verse poem. First and Third lines each have five syllables and the Second line has seven.
- Free Verse – There is not a strict structure – no regular meter, rhyme, fixed line length, or stanza pattern.
- Lyric – expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker, often in highly musical verse.
- Ballads – songlike poems that tell stories. They often deal with adventure and romance.
- Concrete – poems are shaped to look like their subjects. The poet arranges the lines to create a picture on a page.
- Limericks – humorous, rhyming, five-lined poems with a specific rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme.
- Rhyming Couplets – pairs of rhyming lines, usually of the same meter and length.